I don't know whether I've mentioned this, but we as a family don't do much along the "holiday" line.
We do tend to follow the social dicta at Christmas, more to prevent the urchin riot that we'd have to suppress if we forewent the traditional evergreen/presents/Santa menage than because of any real religious belief or even, in my case, at least, a particular fondness for "the season".
The Fourth is just an excuse to blow shit up.
I try and remember to hang my Army flag outside on June 14th, and we are good trick-or-treaters come All Hallows Eve.
But other than that, not so much.
So when I say that we really didn't plan for much celebration of the "Autumn Moon Festival" you should probably not be surprised.
This is also well in keeping with our tradition of being shitty adoptive parents. According to the most respected Chinese Adoption Authorities - that is to say, 95% of the adoptive parents in the Portland area - at this time of year we should be all moon cakey,
Houyi, and Chang'e-ey. We should be carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns, burning incense in reverence to deities, planting Mid-Autumn trees, collecting dandelion leaves and distributing them evenly among family members, and jiggin' to some dragon dance tunes.
Not. And especially not going home to have a big meal with the fam so the grands can pester the grandkids and complain about their kids, the uncles can get drunk and watch football, and the older kids sit out back in the cold smoking and bitching about having to do this every year, as our guide
said was the real Chinese way to celebrate the mid-autumn festivities?
This from a family that can't be bothered to cook a big meal for Thanksgiving or go to church at Christmas?
Yeah.
Right.
Ha.
But the funny thing is, we DID do some Moon Festivally-things this weekend.
Friday night we took blankets, pillows (and Pillow Pets) and a telescope out to the vast asphalt expanse of Astor Elementary playground and looked at the moon. Except that palled after a while, so the kiddos ran around while Mojo and I looked at Jupiter and its four Galilean moons, which was cooler.
And today we went downtown to the Lan Su Chinese Garden, took in some lion dancing and scoped out the foliage. Then went and at spaghetti for lunch which, as I explained to little Miss as she scarfed it down (girl is in the middle of a growth spurt, I swear, or has picked up a tapeworm...), was actually a Chinese invention.
Then we went to Starbucks. So, OK, we weren't THAT autumn festivally.
But, hell, I think we deserve an "A" for effort.
See, the thing is, we're supposed to be all turning-Chinese when the traditional Chinese holidays come around; giving red-envelope money and blasting fireworks for the lunar New Year and doing moon-viewing and moon-cake eating for the "Mid-Autumn Festival", a.k.a. Moon Festival. It's a total Portland China-adoptive-parent thing and one reason our pictures are on the cover of the Portland FCC's "Busted" magazine as the Worst AP's Evah.
Since we concluded that if the ancient Chinese had had access to Moon Pies, they would have been on them like Republicans on a Second Amendment bumper-sticker.
(h/t to Ambassador Doodle for the funny post and the mooncake/moon pie graphic)
